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These agreements will most likely be ironed out. What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible t

These agreements will most likely be ironed out. What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. I believe there is indeed risk using models that could be biased but I don't believe that is a new problem. I still don't think we are at risk from a runaway AGI that is going to destroy us.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
matheusmoreira 2y ago
It's just the angle they're using to solidify their market position and establish moats around their technology, if not an actual monopoly. All this fearmongering over "safety"? It's to get the governments the world over to "regulate" this stuff, thereby raising barriers to entry. Such a thing would essentially make them the only AI company that's allowed to do business.
- seunosewa 2y ago
  This won't prevent their major rivals - cloud companies like Google with deep pockets - from competing with them. It only hurts the little startups and SMEs.
ADeerAppeared 2y ago
> What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. It's marketing. "Our AI is so powerful it's going to destroy the world" is just a way to market "Our AI is so powerful, give us money". The only people who sincerely care about "extinction risk" are the weird cultists. In the real world there's essentially zero chance of LLMs/Current-GenAI scaling up into AGI, nevermind AGI that'd be an extinction risk. (Yes, that phrasing is cheeky. AGI is a different kind of AI, not just specialized models made bigger. But we're only really trying to make them bigger, and not build general intelligence from the ground up) > I believe there is indeed risk using models that could be biased but I don't believe that is a new problem. It's the same old problem with most software, and it's similarly ignored. These models are biased, and attempts to control that bias are a shitshow. (As Google conveniently showed everyone) The problem is twofold: 1. This bias has severe real world impact. https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machine-learning-tool-pulse-stylegan-obama-bias https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machin... This is an article from 2020. We still haven't fundamentally addressed problems like this. These tools are still used by law enforcement and businesses making life-impacting decisions. 2. There's a widespread sentiment that "computers can't be racist". Whenever the bias of these systems hits the news or otherwise gets attention, they're often colloquially described as "racist" (or "sexist", etc), which triggers a swift counter from many techbros going "Um akshually it's not racist, it's merely skin tone reflectivity/it's merely the data set/etc"^[1] The argument effectively being, "It's not racism because it's not intended, it's merely sparkling discrimination". Yet, this is used as a thought terminating cliché. Nothing is done about the discrimination. Everyone just goes home. "It's not racist, we're not bad people, job done." Leaving the harm of the discrimination unsolved. This is not without cause. The only way to really "un-bias" these systems effectively would be to extensively curate the dataset and admit that the systems are of very limited capability and should not be used in (non-research) production environments. Both of these are "impossible". Curating the dataset for current generative-AI would take years and years. And admitting AI shouldn't be used for anything where the bias may have a material impact on the outcome kills the hype bubble. AI firms and developers don't want to address the problem, because the problem is really hard and annoying. But despite these costs, we should still do it. Because it is the morally correct thing to do. And because regulators are going to tear every company involved a new one if they don't. --- [1]: A footnote to pre-empt something: I don't care what side of this argument you're on. Whether you believe "racism" must include an element of intent or can be done by machines and systems without intent, there is discrimination with material harm on real people. Whether you call that discrimination "racism" or "sparkling machine discrimination" does not matter. The harm matters, and must be stopped.
- rolisz 2y ago
  > Whether you call that discrimination "racism" or "sparkling machine discrimination" does not matter. I believe it does: if you're calling racism anything from Hitler to someone who wants to be punctual [1], the word loses it's meaning and people will start arguing about degrees instead of harmful behaviors. [1] https://www.thompsoncoe.com/resources/myhrgenius/hr-tips/tip/are-attendance-policies-discriminatory/ https://www.thompsoncoe.com/resources/myhrgenius/hr-tips/tip...
  - ADeerAppeared 2y ago
    The point is that it's a separate discussion, and that losing yourself in that discussion rather than adressing the material harm of the discrimination, is a problem. And I get it, the discussion is deeply alluring. There is a deep amount of nuance involved. Your point about punctuality is begging for a response about how "punctuality is racist" looks dumb on the surface but belies a deeper point about polychronic cultures that has a lot of legitimate merit to it. I'll refrain from giving you that full ramble lest I betray my original point, if you or a lurker wants it toss a reply and we can have a go. But note that your link uses a baity headline to grab your attention for a more nuanced point.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      > Your point about punctuality is begging for a response about how "punctuality is racist" looks dumb on the surface but belies a deeper point about polychronic cultures that has a lot of legitimate merit to it. Two points: 1. I think this is indeed a very valid and important topic, that humans would benefit from (being able to[1]) take seriously (something along these lines, I am approximating, of course). 2. Your concern, at least in part, seems to be ~racism, and presumably that racism is unjustified, that the perceived underlying problems are imaginary. But then you mentioned culture. Culture exists, and is not very far removed from race. To be clear(!): this is not a promotion of delusional behavior, like: racism, culturalism, anti-racism, anti-culturalism, etc, I'm more so pointing out that "right thinking" on these matters is not correct, and that even the good people have heads full of silly and dangerous ideas. [1] Imho the real problem here is less that it isn't taken seriously than the much broader problem that humans seem essentially unable to control what they take seriously, or their "seriousness service". And this isn't the only service they essentially have no control over.
ImHereToVote 2y ago
How many hours do we have once we have something that does look like AGI that is going to destroy us?
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Probably years to make any kind of dent, while using so much power that it would be easily noticeable. Take a group of smart people, arguably the equivalent for AGI. How can they destroy the human race? We've made it exceedingly hard for anyone to do anything of the sort because there've always been groups like that. It's even harder if you have no physical form at all. Besides, take literally any base model of any LLM made so far, they're quite the opposite of evil and destructive. Training on human data makes them embody human values and makes them a complete non threat.
  - neilv 2y ago
    > Training on human data makes them embody human values and makes them a complete non threat. What if they embody stereotypical SV techbro greedy and arrogant sociopath values?
    - jjkaczor 2y ago
      ... Or worse ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      I'm sure Elon tried his best to do so with Grok-1, but failed anyway.
  - fakedang 2y ago
    As long as there's a financial interest for a small minority, there will be a scenario where a doomsday AI will be ignored until it's too late. A dangerous AI won't be killer robots going about patrolling the streets. But they could block job prospects, put people on watchlists, block financial transactions for them, etc. I'd say that tech is already here.
stainablesteel 2y ago
i'm in agreement that the safety/control attitude towards AI is more dangerous than anything AI will actually do
- lijok 2y ago
  How is the safety/control attitude towards AI more dangerous than, for example, using AI to curate a list of likely future enemies of the state based on their contributions to discourse online?
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    What about the current safety/control attitude prevents that? The current approach, where OpenAI keeps everything private in the name of safety only makes the safety situation worse because we'll only find out things like that are being done after the fact, and there won't be any accountability.
    - lijok 2y ago
      Are you suggesting OpenAI be forced to make everything public before they've figured out the safety systems, because you're afraid of the hypothetical unfolding if they don't? That sounds like a fear-driven response to me, and no way to propose good policy. Do correct me if I'm mischaracterizing.
      - dotnet00 2y ago
        No, I'm saying that their excuse that they're keeping things private because of safety is a farce and they should be honest and admit that they're keeping things private because they've abandoned the original mission behind putting 'Open' in 'OpenAI'.
  - stainablesteel 2y ago
    it prevents development on the human side while accumulating power for a small group of elites that won't share it with anyone else, but who constantly uses it to start new wars you can already curate a list of future enemies, its not impossible. you can even do it at large scales, this isn't new tech introduced via ai
dartos 2y ago
I agree that I don’t think we’re in danger of runaway AGI, but tbf, in the early 2000s, there were a lot of safety risks to social media we couldn’t see yet. “I don’t think a live message board is going to destroy society” could’ve been something someone said about Facebook or Twitter. The danger there wasn’t in the tech, it was in the societal impact and consolidation of information control. Both, imo, are danger areas for AI as well.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- exe34 2y ago
  did Facebook destroy society?
  - klodolph 2y ago
    This line of discussion is the “Let’s talk about whether the word ‘destroy’ is correct here” which is tangential at best.
    - exe34 2y ago
      your response and that of many others here lead me to think I've attacked a religiously held belief here. I'd like to apologise for causing offense. I will not question the creed again.
      - klodolph 2y ago
        It sounds like you got a lot of responses. Naturally, when you get a lot of responses to something, it feels very intense. So it’s natural to think that the people responding to you feel that same level of intensity that you do. This is, usually, not true. But I can understand why you’d feel that way… I can understand why you feel like you’ve stepped on some kind of religious tenet. In reality, it’s just a bunch of people independently replying to you. They’re not offended, it just feels intense to you because of how many people are replying. The same thing happens, for example, on Stack Overflow if you say something technically wrong, and ten people independently correct you. It feels like some kind of attack, even when it is not.
pk-protect-ai 2y ago
I'm refusing to consider the runaway AGI a possibility within the next 20 years. However, your comment shifts the discussion away from the actual issue. Altman's hype lines were "regulate us," which is what this hypocrite rode the wave of hype with. Now he is forbidding reporting on safety risks to the regulator... which is illegal in the first place, and yes, the entire business of OpenAI is so overhyped due to Altman's manipulations. I'm so glad that I no longer need to use OpenAI models; there are far better alternatives available, thanks to Meta and Anthropic. Private
slibhb 2y ago
> What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. Exactly. I think it's the classic "I'm so smart I can reason about the world without any evidence". This is a perennial trap that very smart people fall into. The antidote is to always look for evidence or "something tangible".
- pjc50 2y ago
  > "I'm so smart I can reason about the world without any evidence" This is also a key limitation on non-embodied AIs.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

matheusmoreira 2y ago

It's just the angle they're using to solidify their market position and establish moats around their technology, if not an actual monopoly. All this fearmongering over "safety"? It's to get the governments the world over to "regulate" this stuff, thereby raising barriers to entry. Such a thing would essentially make them the only AI company that's allowed to do business.

seunosewa 2y ago
This won't prevent their major rivals - cloud companies like Google with deep pockets - from competing with them. It only hurts the little startups and SMEs.

ADeerAppeared 2y ago

> What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. It's marketing. "Our AI is so powerful it's going to destroy the world" is just a way to market "Our AI is so powerful, give us money". The only people who sincerely care about "extinction risk" are the weird cultists. In the real world there's essentially zero chance of LLMs/Current-GenAI scaling up into AGI, nevermind AGI that'd be an extinction risk. (Yes, that phrasing is cheeky. AGI is a different kind of AI, not just specialized models made bigger. But we're only really trying to make them bigger, and not build general intelligence from the ground up) > I believe there is indeed risk using models that could be biased but I don't believe that is a new problem. It's the same old problem with most software, and it's similarly ignored. These models are biased, and attempts to control that bias are a shitshow. (As Google conveniently showed everyone) The problem is twofold: 1. This bias has severe real world impact. https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machine-learning-tool-pulse-stylegan-obama-bias https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machin... This is an article from 2020. We still haven't fundamentally addressed problems like this. These tools are still used by law enforcement and businesses making life-impacting decisions. 2. There's a widespread sentiment that "computers can't be racist". Whenever the bias of these systems hits the news or otherwise gets attention, they're often colloquially described as "racist" (or "sexist", etc), which triggers a swift counter from many techbros going "Um akshually it's not racist, it's merely skin tone reflectivity/it's merely the data set/etc"^[1] The argument effectively being, "It's not racism because it's not intended, it's merely sparkling discrimination". Yet, this is used as a thought terminating cliché. Nothing is done about the discrimination. Everyone just goes home. "It's not racist, we're not bad people, job done." Leaving the harm of the discrimination unsolved. This is not without cause. The only way to really "un-bias" these systems effectively would be to extensively curate the dataset and admit that the systems are of very limited capability and should not be used in (non-research) production environments. Both of these are "impossible". Curating the dataset for current generative-AI would take years and years. And admitting AI shouldn't be used for anything where the bias may have a material impact on the outcome kills the hype bubble. AI firms and developers don't want to address the problem, because the problem is really hard and annoying. But despite these costs, we should still do it. Because it is the morally correct thing to do. And because regulators are going to tear every company involved a new one if they don't. --- [1]: A footnote to pre-empt something: I don't care what side of this argument you're on. Whether you believe "racism" must include an element of intent or can be done by machines and systems without intent, there is discrimination with material harm on real people. Whether you call that discrimination "racism" or "sparkling machine discrimination" does not matter. The harm matters, and must be stopped.

rolisz 2y ago
> Whether you call that discrimination "racism" or "sparkling machine discrimination" does not matter. I believe it does: if you're calling racism anything from Hitler to someone who wants to be punctual [1], the word loses it's meaning and people will start arguing about degrees instead of harmful behaviors. [1] https://www.thompsoncoe.com/resources/myhrgenius/hr-tips/tip/are-attendance-policies-discriminatory/ https://www.thompsoncoe.com/resources/myhrgenius/hr-tips/tip...
- ADeerAppeared 2y ago
  The point is that it's a separate discussion, and that losing yourself in that discussion rather than adressing the material harm of the discrimination, is a problem. And I get it, the discussion is deeply alluring. There is a deep amount of nuance involved. Your point about punctuality is begging for a response about how "punctuality is racist" looks dumb on the surface but belies a deeper point about polychronic cultures that has a lot of legitimate merit to it. I'll refrain from giving you that full ramble lest I betray my original point, if you or a lurker wants it toss a reply and we can have a go. But note that your link uses a baity headline to grab your attention for a more nuanced point.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > Your point about punctuality is begging for a response about how "punctuality is racist" looks dumb on the surface but belies a deeper point about polychronic cultures that has a lot of legitimate merit to it. Two points: 1. I think this is indeed a very valid and important topic, that humans would benefit from (being able to[1]) take seriously (something along these lines, I am approximating, of course). 2. Your concern, at least in part, seems to be ~racism, and presumably that racism is unjustified, that the perceived underlying problems are imaginary. But then you mentioned culture. Culture exists, and is not very far removed from race. To be clear(!): this is not a promotion of delusional behavior, like: racism, culturalism, anti-racism, anti-culturalism, etc, I'm more so pointing out that "right thinking" on these matters is not correct, and that even the good people have heads full of silly and dangerous ideas. [1] Imho the real problem here is less that it isn't taken seriously than the much broader problem that humans seem essentially unable to control what they take seriously, or their "seriousness service". And this isn't the only service they essentially have no control over.

ImHereToVote 2y ago

How many hours do we have once we have something that does look like AGI that is going to destroy us?

moffkalast 2y ago
Probably years to make any kind of dent, while using so much power that it would be easily noticeable. Take a group of smart people, arguably the equivalent for AGI. How can they destroy the human race? We've made it exceedingly hard for anyone to do anything of the sort because there've always been groups like that. It's even harder if you have no physical form at all. Besides, take literally any base model of any LLM made so far, they're quite the opposite of evil and destructive. Training on human data makes them embody human values and makes them a complete non threat.
- neilv 2y ago
  > Training on human data makes them embody human values and makes them a complete non threat. What if they embody stereotypical SV techbro greedy and arrogant sociopath values?
  - jjkaczor 2y ago
    ... Or worse ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    I'm sure Elon tried his best to do so with Grok-1, but failed anyway.
- fakedang 2y ago
  As long as there's a financial interest for a small minority, there will be a scenario where a doomsday AI will be ignored until it's too late. A dangerous AI won't be killer robots going about patrolling the streets. But they could block job prospects, put people on watchlists, block financial transactions for them, etc. I'd say that tech is already here.

stainablesteel 2y ago

i'm in agreement that the safety/control attitude towards AI is more dangerous than anything AI will actually do

lijok 2y ago
How is the safety/control attitude towards AI more dangerous than, for example, using AI to curate a list of likely future enemies of the state based on their contributions to discourse online?
- dotnet00 2y ago
  What about the current safety/control attitude prevents that? The current approach, where OpenAI keeps everything private in the name of safety only makes the safety situation worse because we'll only find out things like that are being done after the fact, and there won't be any accountability.
  - lijok 2y ago
    Are you suggesting OpenAI be forced to make everything public before they've figured out the safety systems, because you're afraid of the hypothetical unfolding if they don't? That sounds like a fear-driven response to me, and no way to propose good policy. Do correct me if I'm mischaracterizing.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      No, I'm saying that their excuse that they're keeping things private because of safety is a farce and they should be honest and admit that they're keeping things private because they've abandoned the original mission behind putting 'Open' in 'OpenAI'.
- stainablesteel 2y ago
  it prevents development on the human side while accumulating power for a small group of elites that won't share it with anyone else, but who constantly uses it to start new wars you can already curate a list of future enemies, its not impossible. you can even do it at large scales, this isn't new tech introduced via ai

dartos 2y ago

I agree that I don’t think we’re in danger of runaway AGI, but tbf, in the early 2000s, there were a lot of safety risks to social media we couldn’t see yet. “I don’t think a live message board is going to destroy society” could’ve been something someone said about Facebook or Twitter. The danger there wasn’t in the tech, it was in the societal impact and consolidation of information control. Both, imo, are danger areas for AI as well.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
exe34 2y ago
did Facebook destroy society?
- klodolph 2y ago
  This line of discussion is the “Let’s talk about whether the word ‘destroy’ is correct here” which is tangential at best.
  - exe34 2y ago
    your response and that of many others here lead me to think I've attacked a religiously held belief here. I'd like to apologise for causing offense. I will not question the creed again.
    - klodolph 2y ago
      It sounds like you got a lot of responses. Naturally, when you get a lot of responses to something, it feels very intense. So it’s natural to think that the people responding to you feel that same level of intensity that you do. This is, usually, not true. But I can understand why you’d feel that way… I can understand why you feel like you’ve stepped on some kind of religious tenet. In reality, it’s just a bunch of people independently replying to you. They’re not offended, it just feels intense to you because of how many people are replying. The same thing happens, for example, on Stack Overflow if you say something technically wrong, and ten people independently correct you. It feels like some kind of attack, even when it is not.

pk-protect-ai 2y ago

I'm refusing to consider the runaway AGI a possibility within the next 20 years. However, your comment shifts the discussion away from the actual issue. Altman's hype lines were "regulate us," which is what this hypocrite rode the wave of hype with. Now he is forbidding reporting on safety risks to the regulator... which is illegal in the first place, and yes, the entire business of OpenAI is so overhyped due to Altman's manipulations. I'm so glad that I no longer need to use OpenAI models; there are far better alternatives available, thanks to Meta and Anthropic. Private

slibhb 2y ago

> What I am more interested in is the constant pressure on "safety risks" without anything that feels tangible to me so far. Exactly. I think it's the classic "I'm so smart I can reason about the world without any evidence". This is a perennial trap that very smart people fall into. The antidote is to always look for evidence or "something tangible".

pjc50 2y ago
> "I'm so smart I can reason about the world without any evidence" This is also a key limitation on non-embodied AIs.